I was on the phone with Mile2 (among other training companies) and they told me the person who they have teaching the CPTE course is the same person who was teaching and marketing the CEH course. Mile2 told me that this guy was the first person to actually market CEH cert and now he says the CPTE is a much more dominant course and goes deeper into the modules as well as covering more subjects. He said he's suggesting everyone who's thinking about the CEH to take the CPTE instead. He says the labs for CEH are poorly written, hard to get through all the slides, and still very old material in the new CEH.

CEH has a significantly stronger brand than CPTE so if you are doing it to grease the HR wheels than the choice is pretty clear. I can't speak to the quality of either program but just want to put things in perspective for you. Most folks I know agree, that if you want to learn and are on a budget take OSCP. If you have budget do OSCP/OSCE + GPEN/GWAPT/GXPN/GAWN. If you want to get an interview, do the CEH (or CISSP - regardless if it's not a pentest cert) because most HR folks have no clue what those other jumble of letters are.

Yeah, that's the first thing that came to mind, about the company just wanting to make their own course sound more important and sought after than the CEH. It was odd though that she told me this CPTE trainer was the first person to market the CEH certification years ago and one of the first CEH trainers but now he's telling people that the CPTE is/will be better on the resume and more up to date/relevant content which you can actually practice with in class.

I'm just searching now for CPTE vs CEH comparisons. My employer (gov't) is very stingy when it comes to training $$ so it would be a miracle if they pay for even 1 course. Just trying to make sure I push for the right course to take. I'm wanting the course for my resume as well as for my own personal learning/grow my skills/knowledge.

I'll take a look at OSCP as well but it talks about having to craft custom tailored exploits among other things to pass the practical exam and I know very little programming, let alone how to create a custom exploit.

p0et, I am in the same boat as you. OSCP looks fun as hell but the creating exploits and programming aspect scares the daylights out of me lol The only type of experience I have with stuff like that is writing some basic shell scripts.

CEH is great for HR only. When I do technical interviews, I always ask CEH certified folks how they feel CEH has prepared them to work in security. Those with other certs (who are on the level) usually tell me that it was a cake walk compared to cert X (besides say A+). Those who only have the CEH regularly tell me how difficult it is and how they are totally prepared to audit, hack, or <insert random security buzzword here> my networks. These people seriously oversell the certification. Bottom line, book knowledge doesn't get you anything in security unless you can do it and CEH doesn't measure that.

I agree that OSCP/OSCE is the way to go. I took the OSCE course and couldn't be happier. I am yet to sit for the certification due to an insanely busy year, but will certainly hire those that have it over those that have CEH.

If I remember correctly, all of my certs have been book knowledge (and bootcamp) only. I'd love to have a more hands on/practical course and exam. In addition to the OCSE/OSCP, I was told from mile2 that the CPTE is much more hands on than the CEH course. Not sure if that's true or not but I'd love to find out.

Really good question I agree with most what has been said here I also know from experience of going to interviews in the UK. Some companies value CEH and some think its waste of time and not worth the paper its written on.

I personally looked at doing CEH but found it to be very tool based and also felt there were much better cert to do than CEH like OSCP or even elarnsecurity in the end i didn't have the money to do any

Haven't taken the class yet, I'm hoping to win this month's contest and see if they will do a ground course.

From what I have seen, their videos are detailed enough that you can certainly find the (very relevant) tools and use them. If im not mistaken, I remember the instructor doing a demo of (I cant remember the name, it was a data aggregation reconnaissance tool.)

BTW, Mile2 was indeed one of the first ATC's for EC-Council. If i'm not mistaken, Wayne Burke was one of their instructors. Indeed, I think M2 was involved in a lawsuit with ECC, but they settled.

Last edited by SephStorm on Sat Oct 15, 2011 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

After going on Mile2's website, their products are definitely worth of trying but money is the problem. One of the good things about this month's prizes, is that we will have the chance to get 12 reviews on Mile2's products. it should answer a lot of our questions regarding them.

Just had a look at this month's giveaway. Man, looks like I should try and win one of those mile2 courses and see for myself! ;-) I hate having such a cheap employer and having to do everything out of my own pocket. Can't wait to hear the reviews about mile2.